Shantiel Soeder

Manager, poll worker department, Cuyahoga County Board
of Elections

Shantiel Soeder is trying to fill 10,000 job openings.
Unfortunately, most of them are one-day jobs paying $172 for a very long day. And some of them won't start until Nov. 6, 2012.
Ms. Soeder is manager of the poll worker department at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, where she is part of a team that ran last year's big presidential election with hardly a hitch.
That's a big change from the chaotic elections of recent years that put the Cuyahoga elections board in an unwelcome media spotlight due to long waits to vote, confusion stemming from new, unfamiliar voting machines, and the slow counting of returns.
Besides was gearing up for the election  a task that included writing a new curriculum to train election workers on new equipment  Ms. Soeder was working on her master's degree in public administration at Cleveland State University and nurturing a newborn son. She expects to graduate in May.
I couldn't get a teaching job in Cleveland, said Ms. Soeder, explaining how she came to work in May 2005 as an assistant to Michael Vu, then the elections board director.
Her boyfriend had taken a job in Cleveland, and Ms. Soeder was finishing up her undergraduate work at Indiana University.
I came for love, she said of her move to Northeast Ohio. Not long after she settled in, the pair married.
Ms. Soeder started at the elections board right before it began the conversion to electronic voting machines. She soon found herself in the thick of efforts to smooth the road to the conversion, which was less than successful under Mr. Vu.
In March 2007, Mr. Vu was ousted and replaced by Jane Platten, a longtime county worker. Ms Platten had Ms. Soeder doing poll worker recruitment, and after the November 2007 election she became the department's manager.
She's a highly organized, highly motivated young woman, Ms. Platten said. She's really developed into one of our strong, good managers. She's fearless of change.